cp
Shares rank 59 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
Standard Unix copy command that is easy to explain over the phone and well established. Critics agree its default options are poor and it has no undo.
Standard Unix copy command that is easy to explain over the phone and well established. Critics agree its default options are poor and it has no undo.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 50%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy to explain to newbies
“The CLI is also infinitely easier to help newbies use over the phone!”
Comment from 11 Jul 2026 in “Good Tools Are Invisible” Intuitive with minimal extra commands
“cp can do it intuitively and with minimal extra commands”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “cp: -r or -R?” Well established Unix toolchain
“well established and solid unix toolchain”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Good Tools Are Invisible”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Bad defaults, not recursive by default
“For cp, the root cause is that it has bad default options”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Tar files made in macOS generate "xattr" errors when expanded in Linux” “recursive by default would have been much more intuitive”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “cp: -r or -R?”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
10 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Other tools, like cp, don't have any way at all to say copy the directory contents to the dest”
“cp can do it intuitively and with minimal extra commands”
“recursive by default would have been much more intuitive”
“The CLI is also infinitely easier to help newbies use over the phone!”
“well established and solid unix toolchain”
“For cp, the root cause is that it has bad default options”
“cp does not create a crash-consistent snapshot”
“4.2x faster than cp for 100K × 100KB files (local NVMe)”
“I cp one directory too deep and need to undo the mess -- no CTRL+Z!”
“I can never get cp, rsync, mv, find right without looking them up”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.